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Sunday, April 10, 2016

Cappy Talist And The Fruit Pickers

The beginning of yet another potential book:

Once upon a time there was a land without laws. And because
there were no laws, there was no property, for how can one claim possession is
nine-tenths of the law when there is no law? I won’t try to paint the picture
as being rosy and perfect, but the situation was how God made it, rather than
humans. And there was no doubt that people were both free and as equal as possible
given the fact that nature gives to some more than to others.

But because there were no laws, there wasn’t even any law
against making laws. Until one day somebody decided he didn’t like things as
they were. You see, there was one person who decided that whatever benefits
nature had endowed upon him, and let us charitably say that he was already
above average, he realized that what he was able to achieve through his own efforts
wasn’t enough to satisfy the needs of his ego. Whatever attributes nature had given him,
it didn’t give him the ability to realize that he wasn’t the only person that
mattered.

You see, this person decided he was better than the rest. And since he
decided he was better than the rest, he figured he was in a position to make the laws.
Of course, he didn’t call them laws, he called them rules. He decided to play a
game and told everyone else how it was to be played. It was called the
ownership game. Everybody would carve up the land, which previously belonged to
everybody, and take a little piece for himself.

Now the happy people playing in a land with no real
obligations, thought it might be a good idea to play a new game. Also, since there
was one among them who had a certain fever, they may have contracted a little
bit of it as well. So they all decided to play a game in which they would see
who could build the biggest pile of stuff on the biggest piece of land.

Of course, since the first guy, we’ll call him Cappy Talist,
made up the game, he was able to make the rules. He decided that since he was
standing on a certain piece of ground, that that piece belonged to him. There
were others that argued the point, but since it was he who suggested the game,
he convinced the group to agree with his assertion. They were all interested in
whatever amusement the game might provide and weren’t interested in quibbling
over the details. After all, Cappy assured them that the game would be a most
enjoyable and rewarding game for all.

The area that Cappy called his own happened to contain a
rather lot of fruit trees, something nobody but Cappy had thought much about
before agreeing to play the game. So it turned out that very quickly there were
very many people who wanted a snack and had nothing available. Cappy was quite
accommodating, however. He suggested that others could strike a deal with him.
If they were willing to climb the trees and pick the fruit, Mr. Talist (as he
insisted they call him) would give them a portion of the fruit.

Seeing no other option, they readily agreed to pick fruit,
thinking it was a small thing to do in return for food. And so they climbed the
tree, picked the fruit. Except that one of them, while scampering towards the
tree to pick his fruit and so fill his belly, happened to trample upon a flower
in Mr. Talist’s garden. The man, Manwell, apologized to Mr. Talist, although
not with much conviction as the flower he trampled upon was a rose with many
thorns and Manwell had no shoes. Nevertheless, Mr. Talist was quite upset that
Manwell had deprived him of one of his great joys in life and demanded
compensation.

Now none of the other players at this point blamed Manwell
for this innocent blunder, but none of them were willing to risk the ire of Cappy.
Already, several of the weaker members of the community, seeing where there
fruit was, were quite willing to dance to the tune of Mr. Talist, thinking that
while they had never amounted to much in the realm of nature, they might
advance their lot by throwing their support behind the Fruit Master, as one of
them, Ask Isser, called him. So Mr. Talist, by showing some slight advantage,
now found himself much stronger than he started because he drew the support of
Ask Isser and others like him.

Still, there was more than enough for everyone, so there was
little to argue about. As a matter of fact, under the new way that society was
arranged, there was more fruit available than ever before. Seeing that they now
needed to work harder than ever before in order to gather fruit not only for
themselves but for Mr. Talist and his cronies, those who picked the fruit
devised improved methods for harvesting so that they were soon picking fruit
more quickly with less effort. Mr. Talist, realizing he stood to gain by the
increased productivity of the pickers, devised ways of his own to improve the
productivity of the pickers. Of course, Mr. Talist had never been very good at
picking fruit himself, which was one of the reasons he devised the game in the
first place, so his suggestions weren’t always useful. In fact, most of them
involved the pickers working harder, which Cappy urged on by what he called “motivational
speeches”.

Also, Cappy Talist realized there were some among the
pickers who envied Ask Isser and the others who did nothing but eat the fruits
that they picked. Some of the pickers thought that they would very much like to
be like Mr. Isser, and were willing to do whatever it took to curry the favor
of Mr. Talist. These aspiring individuals Mr. Talist was fond of holding up as
an example to the other pickers, and Toe Dee became the role model that Mr.
Talist held up for the others. As the pickers spent their days in the coconut
trees and date trees, the idle likes of Mr. Isser and his chums would stroll
along, praising the efforts of Mr. Dee, so much so that the other pickers came
to believe themselves that Mr. Dee was the epitome of what a good picker should
be, despite the fact that he spent more time polishing apples than actually
picking them.

So efficient was this society at harvesting fruit that Mr.
Alist found he scarcely had room to walk on his own property due to all the
piles of fruit that were all over. In fact, even though Mr. Alist and those who
were part of his circle ate like shameless pigs, they could not put a dent in
the piles of fruit that lay all over. They soon took to squeezing the juices
from the fruits in order that they might not have to eat the lesser parts of
the fruit and instead drink the best of what the fruit had to offer. Soon, the
ground was filled with the squeezed lemons and limes and what have you, the
better part of it going to waste and making the landscape uglier and more
filled with vermin. And somehow they did not seem to realize that while they
wasted fruit that was a gift from the gods, there were those among the pickers
who did not seem to be getting enough. For not every season was bountiful, but
Mr. Alist and those who were most useful to him continued to have more than
they needed, more than they could ever eat., for even in the lean seasons they
demanded their share, even though they could not possibly consume all that they
took.

So efficient were his workers that Cappy had more of them than
he needed. Now he could have simply told the bunch of them to stop working so
hard, but that was not the kind of thinking that had gotten him to his successful
station in life. And so instead he decided that he had too many workers and the
solution to that would be to tell a few of them their effort was no longer
required. The pickers felt that this went against the agreement they had
initially struck, but many of the other workers were simply glad they still had
the opportunity to pick fruit for Mr. Alist. All in all, it was still an okay
deal. And it could be worse, it could be them who were told their labor was no
longer needed. Such might be the situation if they protested too loudly.

Now those who still were actively picking took care of their
brethren who were no longer permitted near the trees that were owned by Mr.
Alist. Although they were working harder than ever before, they still
understood that the ones who were no longer picking still needed to eat. And
although they assumed Mr. Alist would throw a few bananas in the pot in order
to make sure everyone had enough to eat, they soon learned that Mr. Alist had
different ideas. It was not that he was indifferent to the plight of those who
now had no access to the fruit of the island, it was a matter of philosophy
that made him refuse to participate in the charity and sense of brotherhood
that the others believed in. You see, Mr. Alist, believing himself to be the example of the ideal man, understood that those without labor should invent their own games should they wish to have a full belly. In short, they should be more like him. Mr. Alist was an idea man, on a mission to make the world a better place. Well, mostly he wanted more for himself, but somewhere in his own self-interest was a most noble and selfless philosophy.

Philosophy was a big word, bigger than any the simple
fruit-picking islanders had heard before. And the way that Mr. Alist used it so
freely and so confidently gave the pickers the impression that Mr. Alist had a
wisdom that surpassed that of others. In fact, so wise did Mr. Alist appear
that they could not even see what he was talking about. It must be beyond the
minds of simple fruit-pickers, they thought. “That is what makes Mr. Alist such
a great man”, said Toe Dee, Ask Isser, and others who approved of him. “He can
see things that others do not.”

“For you see,” said Mr. Alist, “the system I have created is
a wonderful system. It has created a wealth undreamed of before I came along.”
And the pickers couldn’t help but agree that the amount of fruit being picked
was now greater than before the time that Mr. Alist instituted his system. And
yet they couldn’t help thinking that they had enough to eat before, and didn’t
work so hard. And some part of them seemed to be nostalgic for the world as it
was before progress became their standard rather than happiness. But of course,
progress was so much easier to keep tabs on than happiness. One only had to
look down from the trees in which they spent more and more of their time to see
all the coconut shells to be able to verify their progress.

The amount of rotting fruit that now lay on the ground DID
take away from the beauty that once existed on the island. Also, there were
those individuals who were now no longer permitted to pick fruit who were worse
off than before. But Mr. Alist was quite confident, and they were, after all,
simple pickers. Who were they to argue with Cappy when he was so certain and so
successful?

Now Mr. Alist, while not being overly intelligent, was
nonetheless in possession of a good deal of shrewdness. He realized that by
letting some of his fruit pickers go that he created a degree of uncertainty in
the others. The result was that those who still worked worked harder still,
afraid that they could be the next to lose their fruit-picking positions. Soon
there was even more fruit piled upon the property of Mr. Alist than ever
before.

This should have been a good thing, but in fact it made Mr.
Alist’s problem even worse. He could only eat so much fruit. And he had far
more fruit than he could eat in a lifetime. It was such a big problem that it
began to affect his appetite, which made matters even worse. There was no way
to consume all the fruit the pickers had given to him as his payment. He tried
letting go of even more workers but was afraid that too many people with empty
stomachs and idle hands might interrupt the game he had established. And while
he now faced a problem, he had no desire to go back to the days when he
actually had to work for his living. It wasn’t so much the work itself that he
worried about: he had always been a bit of a shirker, and if the truth were
known had never really earned his living. No, it was being the man who
controlled things that appealed to him. He would never go back to being just
one of the people again, not after tasting the power and the prestige he had
acquired.

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About Me

The Amazing MorseThe Amazing Morse is a blog dedicated to my works of fiction, primarily my first series, The Amazing Morse. My postings will be either from my own perspective or that of my character Dave Morse.